| >Or just take your same machine tool and make a metal gun? Even in the infancy of the technology home 3D printers are already far more common than home mill/lathe setups and require far less skill to use. With the growing success of Dark-markets (even with the recent raids) there will be a growing move to design illicit goods specifically for mailing (even now this is done for drugs). It’s far easier to get a bullet with integrated barrel through UK customs than it is to get an entire gun. All of this is being discussed with a heavy US bias. In some parts of the world homemade guns are a serious problem- http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/06/16/australian-pol... http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2013/11/21/revolving-shot... http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/08/25/homemade-semi-... http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/09/16/south-american... http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/crime/441342/northern-pen-gu... 3D printing has the potential to significantly lower the level of skill required to make them. I’m saying this as someone who knows the level of skill required- I learned metal work hand-scraping surface plates and using a shaper to cut cams, moved onto CNC and now use 3D printers. I give classes on 3D printing, am active in the community and a huge fan of the technology. No, we should not be hysterical about it but we also should not blindly say decreasing the level of skill required to build firearms is something we can safely ignore. |